What Web3 Is — and Why It’s Not Going Away

Web3 is a term that keeps surfacing — in media, in tech conversations, in digital projects. It’s often framed as “the future of the internet,” yet rarely explained in a way that actually makes sense. So let’s leave the technicalities aside and look at how we got here.

For many, Web3 sounds like noise. Another term. Another promise. Another concept we’re expected to understand before it disappears.

But it’s neither that new nor that fleeting. Even if its meaning remains unclear to many, Web3 has been around for years — and it points toward a deeper shift in how the internet works.

It Didn’t Come Out of Nowhere

Web3 didn’t emerge in isolation. Back in the 1990s, Tim Berners-Lee — the creator of the World Wide Web — was already talking about a “Web 3.0.” But his vision was different. He referred to the semantic web: an internet where data would be structured in a way that machines could better understand and process it, reducing reliance on intermediaries.

The term Web3, as we use it today, came later. In 2014, Gavin Wood — co-founder of Ethereum — used it to describe a new model: a decentralized internet built on blockchain.

The core idea wasn’t technical, but structural. Wood argued that the real problem with the internet wasn’t how it worked — but who controlled it.

While Web 3.0 and Web3 emerged from different contexts and propose different solutions, they share a common intention: to address the same underlying issue — making the internet more useful, less dependent, and more intelligent in how it handles information and value.

Both Berners-Lee and Wood understood something fundamental: the current model of the internet is limited. And evolving it means reducing dependency on third parties — and giving control back to users.

Tim Berners-Lee, creador de la World Wide Web / Foto: Le Fevre Communications

Gavin Wood, cofundador de Ethereum / Foto: TechCrunch, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

You can’t understand it without looking back

In its early days, the internet was largely static. You could read, but not participate. Information moved in one direction. This is what we now call Web1.

With the arrival of Web2 in the early 2000s, the internet became participatory. Social networks, video platforms, marketplaces — suddenly, anyone could publish, share, and connect.

It felt like freedom. We were no longer just consuming information — we were producing it.

But that freedom came with a trade-off.

Digital activity became concentrated in centralized platforms. Companies like Google, Meta, Amazon, or TikTok store our data, manage our digital identities, and control what gets seen.

You don’t truly own your content. You don’t control your data. You don’t set the rules — platforms do. They host your identity, shape your visibility, and decide what is seen and what isn’t. Ultimately, they can remove accounts and block content altogether.

Web2 enabled participation — but it also masked dependency and concentrated control.

Where Web3 Begins

Web3 pushes back against that concentration. Its core proposition is simple: reduce reliance on platforms and return part of that control to users.

It doesn’t mean eliminating all intermediaries — but it does mean rethinking how ownership and participation are structured online.

Three Key Ideas: Control, Identity, Value

Most explanations of Web3 get lost in technical language — blockchain, tokens, protocols. But the idea becomes clearer if we strip it down to three concepts: control, identity, and value.

1. Control

In today’s model, your account can be suspended, your content removed, and your reach reduced — often without warning.

Web3 aims to allow certain digital assets — files, tokens, identities — to exist independently of any single platform. Ownership and access would no longer depend entirely on a company.

2. Identity

Right now, your digital identity is fragmented. One profile per platform, one login per service — each owned by a different company.

Web3 proposes a more unified and portable identity: something users own and control, and can carry across different environments.

3. Value

In Web2, most of the value generated by users — content, data, attention — is captured by platforms. Users create and engage. Platforms monetize.

Web3 attempts to rebalance this dynamic by allowing users to own and transfer digital assets. In theory, this opens the door for players to capture part of the value they generate.

The Ethical Question: Control or Freedom

This stopped being about technology a while ago. It’s about ethics now.

We’ve already accepted that a certain level of control over information provides security. It prevents fraud, filters abuse, and keeps systems functioning. But that control comes at a cost.

As Shoshana Zuboff*  argues in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019), much of today’s digital economy is built on turning human experience into raw material — something to be analysed and monetised.

At the same time, control has been  ingrained. Philosopher Byung-Chul Han* suggests that, in today’s digital environment, surveillance becomes internalised — something we participate in voluntarily, blurring the sense of limits.

So the real question isn’t whether control should exist — but how far it should go. At what point does the pursuit of security justify constant monitoring? When does protection become dependency? And more importantly, when does the system stop serving users — and start extracting value from them?

This is where the conversation about the future of the internet stops being technical — and becomes political and cultural.

Shoshana Zuboff, a renowned American scholar, economist, and thinker. / Photo: Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Byung-Chul Han, Korean philosopher and essayist. / Photo: ActuaLitté, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Why You’ll Keep Hearing About Web3

Web3 is still in an early stage. There are clear challenges: technical complexity, poor user experience, projects without real utility, and a high level of speculation... But the direction is clear: exploring models where users have greater control over their identity, their assets, and the value they create online.

Web3 will remain part of the conversation not because it’s fully developed — but because it raises questions that are hard to ignore: Who owns what we create online? Who controls our digital lives? How is value distributed on the internet?

These questions are not going away. And until they are answered, Web3 — by that name or another — will continue to shape the conversation.

The Web3 of the future will likely look very different from what we imagine today. What would the internet look like if it belonged more to users than to platforms? We’ll get there.

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*Further Reading

Zuboff, Shoshana — The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019). A leading American scholar and economist, best known for coining and developing the concept of “surveillance capitalism.”

Han, Byung-Chul — Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power (2014). A contemporary philosopher and essayist, known for his analysis of how power, technology, and society have evolved in the digital age.

Morozov, Evgeny — To Save Everything, Click Here (2013). A Belarusian researcher and essayist, widely regarded as one of the most critical voices in contemporary tech thought.

Lanier, Jaron — Who Owns the Future? (2013). An American computer scientist, musician, and thinker, considered a pioneer of virtual reality and a sharp critic of the current internet model.

Lessig, Lawrence — Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (1999). An American legal scholar and theorist, known for his work on how technology shapes and regulates behaviour online.